Birth of the Firebringer

by Meredith Ann Pierce

  Jan shook himself. He was cold. The water from his coat showered onto Dagg, who stirred and at last got groggily to his feet. I roused my daughter. She stood up, draggled and chilled, and shook herself. Jan came near us, and though from time to time I caught his eyes darting guardedly at me, full of questions—a thousand questions—he seemed willing to curb them, for now.

  “Drink,” he told us, bending again to the pool himself. “The water’s sweet.”

  “Sweet?” I heard my daughter say as she waded out into the Mere. “I tasted it this dawn. It’s bitter salt.”

  Jan shook his head, gazing at her again as he had gazed at her for the first time in the milkwood grove, with new eyes. “Sweet now. Taste it.”

  When first I had sipped of the Moon’s Mere, years ago, it made me ill. Then I could stomach no more than a half-dozen swallows before I began to shiver and sweat, and stagger a little in my walking, so strange had been the taste, so mineral. But now as I bent my head with the others to drink, the water was cool and without taint. It washed the bitter taste of the wyrm’s blood from my mouth.

  Jan felt his strength beginning to return. He no longer felt hollow, famished, though he had not eaten in more than a day. The water alone seemed to satisfy him. The rosebuds plastered to his nose and heel had long since sluiced away. His fetlock still felt sore from the wvyern’s sting, his brow tender from the firebowl’s burning. But even those aches were beginning to fade. His forelock fell thickly into his eyes.

  “It is,” Dagg was saying, raising his mouth from the water. “It is sweet.”

  I heard a little noise behind us suddenly and turned, glimpsed something drawing near through the milkwood trees. Then the prince of the unicorns emerged from the grove. I and two of the others started. I had not been expecting him. Only Jan seemed unsurprised.

  His father stood a moment, open-mouthed, and stared at us, seeming almost more astonished to see me than he was to see his son. But it was Jan and the others he spoke to in the end, ignoring me as though I were some haunt or dream.

  “What game is this?” he snorted, stamping his hooves as he always did whenever he was baffled or made uneasy. “Where have you been, the three of you? Traipsing these groves at some colts’ play while your elders and companions ran themselves to rags hunting you.”

  He was all terrible thunder and princely affront. I started to speak, but the princeling stepped past me. He would need no mediator ever again. Approaching, he stood before his father without flinching and said, “No games. Tek, Dagg, and I have been killing that, lest she rouse the wyrms to fall upon us all.”

  He nodded toward the wyvern skin, which lay still floating on the pool. My daughter and Dagg dragged it from the water and spread it out upon the sand. The prince fell silent then, staring at it. Jan turned away, and I stood off with Korr a few moments, telling him from my daughter’s account what had befallen his son in the wyvern’s den.

  The young prince and his two companions meanwhile had raised the skin and shaken off the sand. They let the wind lift it streaming into the air and laid it upon the low branches of the near milkwood trees. Like a great pennant, a banner, it blazed and shimmered in the hot spring sun.

  I left off with Korr, and he said no more to Jan, either in praise or in rebuke. I think it puzzled him to have suddenly a son who neither trembled at his frown nor needed his approval to feel proud. Instead the prince of the unicorns gauged the sun.

  “Come,” he said at last. “We must be off. The hour is late, and the others wait for us upon the Plain.”

  “I’ll leave you then,” I said, shaking the silence from me.

  Korr stared at me. “You’ll not run the journey home with us?” he began.

  I shook my head. “Someone must go before you, and sing the tale.” I gave him no time to argue with me. “Farewell, my prince, my brave daughter, Dagg.”

  And oh, the look Tek gave me then, as if to say, “Off again? Off again, Mother, and only just met.” Would she ever guess why I had left her to be raised in the Vale by the one who calls himself my mate, or ever trust that there are reasons for everything I do? I glanced from her to Jan—then shook such thoughts from me. I could not stay.

  To the young prince, I said, “I’ll leave you with your father now, prince-son, but one day, in a year or two year’s time, you must come away with me. I’ll teach you things a prince should know.”

  He barely understood me. I did not mean him to. That day was yet a long way off. Then, giving to none of them time to stay me or make reply, I tossed my head and wheeled away, galloping off through the flowering milkwood trees, until their boles and the distance hid me from their view.

  Nothing of note befell them in the Hills after I left them. I have never asked the prince’s son how much he told his father of his game of wits with the wyvern queen or of his vision in the womb of Alma—little, I think. Nor have I troubled to discover how they spent their half month returning over the Plain, save only that it was a good running and swift, without mishap.

  I reached the Vale two days before them, and told the whole herd assembled how the prince’s son had saved the pilgrim band from wyvern’s jaws by battling their queen to the death below ground. The old king Khraa was much impressed, fairly burst with pride, calling his grandson a worthy heir.

  But I noticed the gray king looked older than when I had seen him last, barely a month ago. He moved with a stiffness in his bones. Alma was calling him. He and I both knew it, and nothing lay within my power either to stem that call or stay his answering.

  When the prince-son, his father, and the others returned home, two hours before sunset on the day of the full moon, that night each month which the unicorns of the Vale call Moondance, I was already a half day gone. Many of the mares the pilgrims had left in foal the month before now had new foals or fillies at their sides, Jan’s mother among them. And the king was dead.

  So when the prince led his pilgrims home at last, he found, not a gathering of welcome, but one of mourning. Dagg’s father, Tas, took Korr apart to tell him of the gray king’s death. They had buried him the day before, unable to wait upon his son’s return, for the wheel of the world must turn, and time with it.

  Hearing of his father’s death, Korr bowed his head and did not speak. Then he went off to the burial cliffs with a small circle of the highest elders to be made king before sunset, for the herd had been nearly two days without a king and were uneasy for want of one.

  Jan stood amid the milling crowd, feeling lost and uncertain. Friends greeted the new-made warriors with joyous shouts and jostling. Others stood off quietly, recounting the death of the king. But in all the crush of kith and strangers, Jan caught no glimpse of his own dam, Ses. As he stood scanning for her, Dagg’s mother came up beside him.

  “You mother bade me tell you she would wait for you at the wood’s edge, there.”

  Leerah tossed her head. Jan gave her a nod of thanks, then sprang away across the valley floor. He mounted the slope, passing his own cave, and headed toward the line of trees. He saw his mother then, waiting at the wood’s edge among the long, dusky shadows. Her form was the color of beeswax, of flame. A filly not more than two weeks old stood pressed to her flank.

  “What will you call her?” Jan found himself saying. He had come to a halt. The filly started at the sound of his voice, pressing closer to the pale mare’s side. His mother smiled.

  “Lell,” she answered. “We’ll call her Lell.”

  Jan came closer. Dark amber, the filly watched him. Her brushlike, newborn’s mane was blonde. Her brow bore but the promise of a horn, a tiny bump beneath the skin.

  “Well met,” he heard his mother saying, “my bearded boy. You’ll have fine silk upon your chin by summer’s end.”

  Jan felt a rush of pride. Already, he knew, the feathery hairs were sprouting along his jaw.

  His mother said, “How was your pilgrimming?”

  He shrugged, suddenly shy. “You have heard it all already from Jah-lila.”
She nodded and laughed. He said nothing, looking off. “I had a dream,” he said at last, “upon the Mirror of the Moon. I dreamed the unicorns in mourning, crying, ‘He is dead. He of the line of Halla, dead!’” He looked at Ses. “I thought they wept for me.”

  His mother laughed again, but very softly now. “I knew you would return to me. Korr feared you would fly off breakneck at the first opportunity—run wild Renegade across the Plain. But I did not.”

  Jan frowned. “Why would he think that? My place is here, among the Circle.” Already he had forgotten ever dreaming himself outcast.

  Ses nodded, murmuring, “You are prince now of the Ring.”

  Jan gave a little start, then sighed. He had forgotten that. “Mother, I have seen other Rings than ours. I have seen gryphons that were brave and loyal after their own kind of honor, pans dancing to reed voices under the moon, and Renegades who were not hornless, solid-hoofed or godless things.”

  “Aye,” she told him. “That is an old mare’s tale, about the Renegades.”

  “And I have seen a Cycle that is wider than all our smaller Rings,” said Jan, “and includes them, and surpasses them. A place waits for me in that wider Ring, too. I have seen it, and cannot wake or sleep dreamless of it ever again.”

  He saw a slow smile light his mother’s eye. “Then I am glad,” she said. “All that ever I have wished is to see you follow your own heart, and no other.”

  She came forward and stood against him, laying her neck about his neck. Jan saw his sister, Lell, begin to suckle, butting his mother’s side. He leaned against his dam, watching. After a time, he felt her warm, dry tongue stroking his shoulder. He drew back.

  “What are you doing?” he began.

  “Getting the dust off you,” she replied. “Truth, how did you get so much into your coat? You look as though you’ve rolled in it.”

  Jan stood off and shook himself. He had rolled in dust. His winter coat had shed upon the Plain, coming off all in an evening in thick mats of hair. And the color beneath had been darker than the old, not a trace of sable to it. For he was black as his father beneath the shed. The color at last ran true.

  But he had felt strange in his sleek new coat, like a trickster, somehow—like a thief. So he had rolled in dust to hide the color from others’ eyes a few days longer. But there could be no more hiding now. He was home. He shook himself again. Dust rose like smoke from the glossy blackness of him, and hung in the still, sunlit air between the shadows.

  His mother gave no indication of surprise. “And what is that upon your brow?”

  He realized then he had shaken his forelock back as well. He had not meant to. He had been letting it fall thickly into his eyes this last half month. But there could be no taking that back, either. He went to stand before his dam.

  She studied the new hairs, pale as hoarfrost, growing in a thin crescent where the rim of the firebowl had burned him. He had seen them for the first time only that morning, in a pool in the Pan Woods. But he had felt them these last dozen days, growing.

  “Show me the heel where the wyvern stung you.”

  Jan lifted his hoof and held it crooked that she might see the fetlock better. Since they had left the Hallow Hills, he had kept the spot daubed with mud on the healer’s advice; but they had waded streams in the Pan Woods that day, and he had forgotten to replace the mud. The new hair covering the little spot was pale as well.

  “I am the Firebringer,” he said. He had not realized it until they were long out of the Hallow Hills, halfway home across the Plain. He had said nothing to anyone, till now. “I . . . I always thought it would be Korr.”

  Ses laughed then. “My son, I love your father well, but he is no seer of dreams.”

  Jan gazed at her. He could not fathom her unsurprise. Again she laughed.

  “On the night of my initiation, long ago, I saw myself give birth to a flit of flame. And I have never doubted for a day what that must mean.”

  Then Jan said nothing for a while, for he could think of nothing. His sister Lell left off her suckling, and crept around her mother’s side to look at him.

  “Look,” he heard Ses saying. “I see Korr across the Vale, coming back with the elders from the kingmaking.” She looked at him a moment, and then off. “The sun’s almost set. We should go down.”

  She started forward, out of the trees’ shadows. He did not follow. She halted, glancing back at him.

  “Do you come?”

  He shook his head. “You go,” he told her. “In a while.”

  He watched his mother descend toward the valley floor, Lell stumbling after her on long, still-awkward legs. They joined the crowd and made for the rise at the center, which Korr was now mounting. His shoulders were daubed with the red and yellow mud of the grave cliffs, that marks the new-made kings among the unicorns. Jan turned and headed upslope through the trees.

  He made his way to the lookout knoll and stood only paces from the wood’s edge there, from the treeless swatch where he and Tek had fought the gryphon more than a month past—it seemed a very long time ago. Jan gazed down at the milling unicorns, deep blues and scarlets mostly, a smattering of ambers, here and there a gold, a gray.

  “There you are,” panted Dagg, coming up the slope. “I’ve been looking—everyone has.”

  Jan nodded, not turning. He scrubbed himself absently against the rough bark of a fir. His new coat itched.

  Dagg snorted and shouldered against him. “What are you doing up here?”

  “It’s a good spot,” Jan answered. “I can watch the dance from here.”

  “Watch it?” cried Dagg. “You’re always watching things. You never enter in.”

  “I do,” said Jan. “I’m a better dancer than you.”

  “You are not.”

  They fell on each other, nipping and shoulder-wrestling. They snorted, panting—and broke off abruptly at the sound of a low, nickering laugh. Jan turned to see Tek watching from the trees.

  “How did you find us?” demanded Dagg.

  Tek shrugged, emerging from the trees. She turned to gaze toward the unicorns below. “I have long known all your haunts and hollows. They were mine but two years gone.”

  Jan and Dagg came to stand beside her. The dusk deepened. None of them spoke. The evening sky grew red.

  “We should go,” Dagg said.

  Jan caught him back. “Not yet.”

  The sky above was hinting into violet. Tek turned to Jan. “They want to make you prince before the dance,” she said. “It was why I came.”

  Jan looked at her. “Will it matter to you, when I am prince?”

  He heard Dagg’s laugh. His friend shouldered against him. “I never cared when you were princeling, did I?”

  Tek shrugged, eyeing him with half a smile. “Princes put no fear in me.”

  Jan almost laughed, then caught himself. The mark of Alma rode heavy on his brow. “But what if I were more?” he said. “More than prince—would it matter?”

  Dagg looked at him. “Korr’s not dead yet,” he said.

  Then Jan did laugh. He caught Tek studying him.

  “What are you talking about, little prince?” she said quietly. “Tell us.”

  The prince of the unicorns looked down, away. His white heel pricked him in the dark. He picked at the fir needles underfoot with that hind, cloven hoof. “Tomorrow.”

  Above them, the sky shaded from wine to indigo, lying smooth and cloudless as still, clear water. Night settled. A line of silver peered over the slope across the valley from them, and the dark blue of the sky grew suddenly smoky and more light. The few stars pricking the canopy above paled. Jan watched the rim of brightness edging over the hills.

  “Moon’s up,” he heard Dagg saying. “They’ll be starting the dance.”

  Jan drew his breath. “Full moon tonight,” he murmured. “I’d forgot.”

  The herd below had begun to turn, slowly, a rough, wide Ring drifting now deasil, now widdershins about the rise in the valley floor whe
re the new king stood. Tek wheeled on Jan suddenly, gave him a smart nip on the shoulder, then bolted from beside him, tearing down the slope. Her light taunt drifted back:

  “First down shall have the center of the dance!”

  Jan sprang after, and heard Dagg barely a half-pace behind. They galloped breakneck, shouldering and kicking, as they raced to overtake her before she reached the bottom of the slope.

  Full Circle

  19

  So it was not Jan, but I that night who watched the dancing from above. Though the others thought me gone, I had kept myself hidden on the far wooded slope where I had stood the month before. Thus I saw the pilgrims safely home, and the making of Korr into the king.

  The Circle on the valley floor below me grew gradually thinner, its members fanning outward to form a greater, more circular Ring. The young prince, my daughter, and their shoulder-friend rejoined the dance now moving deasil, steadily deasil, beneath the circling moon.

  I departed, and left them to their dancing. And I have come among you these many years after, you who dwell upon the Plain and call yourselves the Free People, you who know so little of your southern cousins, the unicorns of the Vale.

  I have told you this tale to remind you of them, for though you have forgotten it, all unicorns were once a single tribe, just as—though you may doubt it—my people, who dwell beyond the Summer Sea, were once like yours. But this tale marks only the first night of my telling. Come to me tomorrow evening, and I will tell you the rest.